Okay, one last favorite from the ‘Embarrassing Travel’ submissions. For me, there is nothing as uncomfortable as running into a language barrier while traveling. And because of pride, and rather than risk injury to my self esteem, I clam up. You know, instead of saying a whole bunch of wrong words and looking like… a tourist. I know, I roll my eyes at myself, too. Anyway, Sarah is braver, and knows how to laugh at herself. Two things I’m totally working on.

My friend Anne and I decided to meet up in Paris, then head to Spain. After a couple of days of eating heavenly rich food and drinking fantastic wine over candlelight (we joked we had more romance on our trip than with our boyfriends), we hopped on a ryanair flight to Barcelona. Now, Anne speaks French fairly well and she primarily navigated our linguistic way through Paris. I was in charge of Spanish - she wanted no part in that. It had been a couple of years since I’d been abroad and I was a little nervous about this. My Spanish was quite rusty and I had to get us through Spain for 2 weeks.

The ryanair flight flies into a smaller, satellite airport, which means it’s not quite as easy to get into town - fewer obvious signs and helpful people. The train ticket/conductor guy saw I was nervous with my Spanish and decided to give me a hard time, smiling/laughing as he spoke faster and more animated, refusing my requests for “lentamente por favor”. Thankfully, the Spanish folks behind us in line spoke a bit of English and helped us get where we needed to go. The train took us into Barcelona, where we needed to switch to the local metro to get to our hostel.

Travel-weary, we were having a hard time finding which train we needed or where to buy the tickets…I don’t really remember what the problem was. Still somewhat rattled from my airport language trouncing, I tentatively approached the information desk, determined to ask my question in Spanish. “Donde esta Barcelona?” I asked, with newfound confidence. “Que?” she said, furrowing her brow and then raising her eyebrow, clearly annoyed. “Donde esta Barcelona?”

“Aqui!” she said, throwing out her hands with an exasperated sigh. “Lo siento…no comprendo” I said, now quite shaky. “Aqui, aqui, aqui!!” “Um…we’re IN Barcelona, Sarah” Anne says from behind me, laughing hysterically. “Oh, crap, I said….” “Is that what I asked?” now thoroughly embarrassed and edging away from the info stand muttering a “gracias”.

Thankfully, my Spanish improved a lot during that trip, but Anne will not let me live this story down and insists on telling it to everyone. So you see, I live the embarrassment over and over.

Thursday, April 3, 2008 | stories